Lilith’s Castle. Gill Alderman

lake where the black swans and gold-winged divers swam. I paused to inhale the perfume of the night.

       It was dark when I stood before my little building, if dark it can be when the skies are encrusted with jewels, and I went gladly in at one of its arched entrances and sat with crossed legs on the floor. It is the posture the sage uses when he exercises his body and mind to meditate and I had practised it until I was perfect. Such suppleness is the reward of discipline and I had my body well-attuned. I would begin work on my mind.

       First, to clear it, I repeated the mantra the sage had given me and which I can record here in the secrecy of mind and journal. ‘Jaa’ it is, meaningless to me but, I know, a noise like that of the thunder and with an echo in my mind or the mind of this body which I cannot locate.

       Jaa! No room in my mind for thought. Jaa! No room for hunger. Jaa! No room for desire. Jaa! Here is the engine of the body, pulsing, breathing.

       I heard nothing but these, the sounds of life, and the near world fell away from me. I opened my eyes: the building had gone, the trees which surround it, the stars, the night. I sat in an empty place where a redness glowed. Sense of distance, sense of time: they had gone, but somewhere, maybe before me or to one side, I saw a rise in the ground and something indistinct upon it. I thought I was on the Plane of Delusion and blinked to clear my vision. The place glowed, red as the fire of a volcano. My eyes closed, opened. I was back in the annexe and the stars were visible, sparkling gladly beyond the arches.

       I was glad, to be back, to have travelled; but I wondered, where? I took my journal from its place on the shelf beside the statue of Cyllene and wrote in it. At the end of the passage I drew a neat line and a sigil of protection, breathed upon that and replaced the volume. My hand, as I withdrew it from the shelf, knocked against something, the corner of a picture which had not been there before. I stared at it: I had no knowledge of it, had not conjured it; yet there it hung, framed in dark red mulberry wood and glazed with fine, clear glass. It was a portrait in oils and I recognised the sitter, Gry of the Plains, Nandje’s daughter, or to put it in the hyperbolic, Ima style: the picture was a likeness of the Princess of Horses, Gry, Daughter of He Who Bestrides the Red Horse, the Rider, the Imandi. The woman looked serenely at me, dark eyes limpid – beautiful eyes! – her two plaits of hair bound with silver wire at the ends and silver in abundance, worked and engraved rings of it, on her bare arms and one, which had a cunning bone clasp fashioned to look like the tail of a horse, about her left ankle where the hem of her blue dress hung down.

       Parados has done this, I thought. He intruded into my Memory Palace and now he is hanging his memories in my annexe. Yet I could not see how he gained entrance.

       The rolling green Plains made the background in this pretty intrusion, hills and hillocks under the grass, some of them the dwelling-places of the Ima who burrow in the ground as if they were marmots or moles. The sky above the woman’s head was clear and light. That is all, a plain composition truly yet a skilful one for it showed Gry as she is, untouchable and incorruptible, a true daughter of the Horse.

       Marvelling the while, I saw that the sun was fully up. The fires aroused by my writings of Nemione above were quite damped by my writings of what passed here in the night, or maybe by the purity of the new portrait. I lay down to sleep on the hard, marble floor and felt its smooth cold enter my body and freeze my lust altogether. But when I emerge into the day and the camp and am again confronted by the startling beauty of Nemione, I may be in different case.

      The witch’s house, as Gry came in the morning from her sunlit, magic bedroom, had a disordered look. The chair and chest were gone, the stool was upended on the hearth and the tinware packed away. The light at her back, which gilded her dark hair and outlined her slight figure, snapped out as, with a suck and a sigh, the bedroom and all its luxuries vanished; but she spared it not one thought. The experiences of the night had taught her this, that magic may work for ordinary folk, and she ducked outside, through the original, low doorway.

      There was Darklis, holding a steaming cup and a white plate on which lay two slices of dark, rye bread and a boiled egg. The chickens scratched in the grass at her feet. Beyond them, the Red Horse and Streggie waited, the pony laden with two panniers packed with all manner of gear, and a high-backed and embossed saddle. The expression on the pony’s long face was resentful. I’d bet gold – if I had any – that she kicks, thought Gry.

      ‘Ha!’ said Darklis, as Gry advanced and Red Horse neighed a welcome. ‘A tousle-headed lay-abed. Come, chi, hurry yourself. Here’s a break-fast.’

      The food was welcome and Gry ate it quickly and made haste to greet the Horse.

      ‘We must never be parted, you and I,’ she whispered.

      ‘Never again,’ he agreed.

      With many a curse and sigh, the gypsy was dismantling her hut and Gry went to help her, but the willow-sticks whined as they were untied and separated from each other. She dared not touch them.

      At last, Darklis finished loading her long-suffering pony and heaved herself up into the painted saddle, settling with a grunt, her feet hanging low either side. Gry mounted the Red Horse by knee and mane.

      ‘Where are we going?’

      ‘Where we are taken, I suspect; but I think her journey is ours and will take us to Wathen Fields.’

      ‘Come, pretty Chickens and you – my fine fellow!’ the gypsy cried as she touched the pony’s sides with her scarlet heels, and the five hens and the cockerel fluttered in a panic after her and shot, one by one, into the sunny, morning air and so to their perches on the panniers and the pony’s neck.

      ‘Streggie knows where she’s going,’ Darklis called, over her shoulder.

      furious fiery flanks narrow

      brave brutal thick breasted

      Deneholt that merry morning was full of light. The breeze touched but did not hold the autumn leaves so that they rustled quietly; the wood-birds sang with voices as golden as the leaves. Gry too sang cheerily: